Contegiacomo and Associates participated in a competition for an ecological center along the Nakdong River in Pusan, Korea. The work was published in a book titled “Nature vs. Man Made, Conflict or Harmony” 2004. The building is designed and conceived in a way to inspire thought. By experiencing the building we are forced to contemplate the past, present and future existence of nature and human interaction with it.

We are proposing an inside-out building with an open-ended prismatic central core, designed to reflect and refract nature conceptually and pragmatically. The building is a series of illusions where visitors experience natur...

e on an interactive cerebral level as well as a pragmatic, more informative level. The building as a whole acts as portal that connects the physical realm of man’s built environment with more abstract experiences of nature.

Polished steel plates of the interior core shape the primary reflective surfaces of the building’s structure, in contrast to the unfinished cold rolled steel of the interior spaces. The refracted connection between nature and the core is a double-membrane glass curtain wall with integrated prismatic fins that adjust to the diurnal movement of the sun. The building sits atop large wood piers to accommodate infinite...

ly changing tidal conditions.

The high performance envelope provides natural ventilation by controlling air movement through the interior wall cavity, allowing the building to breathe. A geothermal binary plant is utilized to minimize the environmental impact of the structure.